Operator banking on batteries and pumped hydro to prevent blackouts
The Australian Energy Market Operator is banking on large scale batteries and pumped hydro projects to help reduce the risks of rolling blackouts over the next decade on the east coast.
While previous AEMO modelling has predicted the exit of coal-fired power from the grid over the next decade, its latest Electricity Statement of Opportunities highlights how crucial “deep storage” will be to solving the nation’s energy woes.
Utility scale battery projects, such as Victoria’s Big Battery, are helping provide stability in the grid.
“While the ESOO central scenario demonstrates an increase in reliability risk, there are many schemes and developments that have the potential to address the identified risks,” it said.
“A much larger pipeline of proposed generation and storage projects – totalling 173GW of VRE [variable renewable energy] and 74GW of dispatchable resources [including battery, pumped hydro and other technologies] – demonstrate the opportunity for the market to respond to emerging reliability gaps, if projects are developed in a timely manner.”
Big batteries and pumped hydro are not a like-for-like replacement for coal-fired power stations, which have been the backbone of the energy grid for decades, providing synchronous generation 24 hours a day.
But long-term storage projects can be called on in the early morning or early evening when output from wind or solar is at its lowest, providing a few hours of continuous power.
Larger projects in the pipeline will be able to provide 24 hours continuous storage or, in the case of Snowy 2.0, seven days of storage.
AEMO is also banking on a string of mega-storage projects including the $12 billion Snowy 2.0 and the $14 billion Borumba pumped hydro project in south-east
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